The Crazy Talking
by nesting-seraph
Summary: Life goes on. Meanwhile, the Thief King shares his innermost thoughts with whoever is listening, if anyone.


**A little inner monologue I had kicking around. Enjoy.**

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><p>It felt like being reborn.<p>

Everything was so bright, so moving after millennia of suffocating stillness.

For one moment I imagined I was a human again, at last greeting whatever god saw fit to take me in.

In reality I was a monster, a broken, fragmented shell that had once been a man and was now merely a hollow voice and a wisp of spirit animated by a demon.

He was a small, stupid child with no friends and most of his family six feet under.

That's why I chose him.

He was so weak, so powerless, so unfathomably naive. But far from being dead, he was alive. So very alive.

A carefully crafted _living_ doll of blood and soul and throbbing gore.

That's why I hated him.

My soul attached itself to his; I won't pretend I was anything more than a parasite, leeching the life from my ignorant landlord. I am far from delusional.

In his mind I found such goodness and purity, alongside a dull blankness that was intolerable. He wanted for nothing.

Nothing!

'_If a man has found nothing he would die for, then he isn't fit to live.'_ That is what I told him.

"_Why?"_ he asked, _"Why would I want to die?" _

"_If you had no choice, you had to die, how would you have the living __**suffer**__?" _

Here I remember his look of confusion, his eyes moist and shining and so alive that I wanted nothing more than to gouge at them and then see him cry tears of blood and feel something, _anything_.

"_I don't know! What do you want from me?_" His voice grew high as he felt my anger and feared it.

I wanted him to see as no other child sees.

I wanted him to see me and _live_.

I wanted him to have the life I never had.

Not because I felt anything for the boy, but because it was my chance, my last chance, to shape the world upon which I stood.

I am a selfish creature, and always have been.

I am also a forgotten creature.

People remember nothing of the man I once was. This is partly my own fault, of course.

In life I slunk out only when it was dark and silent save the shriek of night animals. Under this cover of darkness I committed acts I wanted no one to know of.

The people who knew the day-child I was when I was young and lived for myself and none other died in a vat of bubbling gold.

I had never seen anything of such value as the death I saw on that day. The gold could have bought the entire kingdom; the souls of the dead took from me the day, and left me the night in which I could twitch and creep and howl and steal and kill and be unknown for all eternity.

But the deaths of so many gave me a new goal.

A dark goal.

A bloodthirsty, aching goal that burned whenever I touched a weapon from that day onwards.

_Kill the priest..._

_Kill the priest..._

_Kill the..._

_Kill..._

_Kill..._

_**Kill!**_

This goal built and grew stronger, as bad things tend to do.

When I died, I had nothing, save my blackest desires. And the demon, of course.

As anyone should be able to gather by now, there was little left to be remembered.

By the time I found the child, I had decided I would rather be infamous than a nothing.

Nothing is nothing, but it is even less than that. Nothing is a seven letter mark on a page, a two syllable word of vibrations that exists. True nothing is like the hole in the 0. It only exists because something else does not. The blackness of the 0 does not continue into the middle. Therefore, nothing is simply an absence of something.

This makes me an absence of something. That's rather depressing.

The demon is something.

Ryou is something.

Air is something.

Even dust is something.

But when you are none of these things, what are you? Nothing.

Perhaps I am a combination of all of the above. Dust and air and Ryou and Demon and half forgotten, dead, bleached bones of ancient tomb robber.

If someone finds my bones (that is, if they haven't turned to dust by now) they might thing I am something belonging in a tomb, rather than an unwelcome intruder. A pharaoh.

Pah.

I know what people think of me. They think that because I was born in Kul Elna, onto the dusty floor of someone's kitchen rather than in a palace surrounded by Egypt's elite midwives, that I am _jealous _of him.

Jealous of what?

Gold? I had that.

Land? I could roam where I pleased.

Power? I had that. Ra knows I had that.

I wanted many things. But they were simple things. I didn't want to be anything special. Undoubtedly as a child I entertained the thought of being a king; what poor child doesn't? But as I grew up I realised how ultimately stifling the life of a king was.

"_I wish I was the pharaoh!"_

"_Me too."_

"_Yeah."_

_The conversation repeated by children all over Kul Elna for generations. I sat cross legged in the shade of a crumbling shack, listening to this with distaste._

"_Why would you want to be the pharaoh?" I asked, my voice deeper and harsher than the other children's, lacking the soprano that makes adults soften. That's probably why I was beaten harder and more often than them. _

"_Hah, A," an older boy said, "You wouldn't understand."_

_The other children laughed. I scowled. _

"_I want to wear his cape! Apparently it's __**this**__ long and purple!" _

_Purple was the colour of royalty, and therefore much revered by the shallow youth of Kul Elna._

"_That's no good for playing in. You'd trip or something." I said. _

"_Hmm..." the child who'd spoken considered that. "I think it would be worth it, going without play."_

"_Or..." I said slyly, "A scorpion could crawl into it, and it's so long you wouldn't notice until you sat down and...BAM!"_

"_Eew, that's horrible."_

"_The pharaoh would squash it, easy! He must be pretty fat, all those royal feasts..." _

"_You wouldn't, though. You're thinner than Moony."_

"_Hey!" I growled, mostly at the use of my much hated nickname. That had all started when one of the smallest children said my hair was like the moon. Unfortunately for me, the name stuck. _

"_What I wouldn't give to be at one of those feasts...I'd grab enough to last me forever, and then I'd never have to eat stew again."_

"_Your mothers stew is nice!"_

"_Not when you eat it every day, it's not..." _

We knew nothing of politics, of war. When we thought of a fight, we thought of brawling in the dirt with the other children (we did this with relish), or a desert cat clawing a snake (we watched, fascinated).

I laughed when people told me of great battles, when thousands of men charged at each other with weapons raised and collided into a tumultuous mess in the middle. I couldn't believe that these men were stupid enough to follow their leader blindly into a fight they knew they would lose.

I was a feral child of no loyalty; the younger children backed away from me, saying I was 'bad'. And in the end, that was the reason I survived, and they perished. While they followed their parents to their deaths, I ran and hid, knowing neither honour nor pride. Only that basic, animal instinct to survive no matter what.

Perhaps that is why, out of all possible candidates, I was the one to be granted a second chance. I simply would not die.

I would not back down and go quietly, fade out when my time came. I would fight my way back, caring for nothing, pitying all that stood in my way.

I am certain that, had I been buried, I would have clawed my way back out of my grave somehow for no reason other than to prove that I could.

And there is another reason why I so despised my landlord.

He hated me. At least I assume he did, and still does. If he doesn't... well, I pity him for not having better judgement.

If I'd been him and I'd had the chance, I would have tortured the man who stole my body until he begged for mercy.

Maybe that's just me.

He could have done it, though. He could have turned on me at any moment. He could have made me feel pain in my soul as he fought me for control of his own body.

But he didn't even try.

Well, maybe he did try. But he didn't try like he meant it. He wanted to. I could feel the passion in him, boiling just below the surface. I could feel the fury pounding in his heart, hear his demons keening, every fibre of his being wanting to see blood pooling on the floor and stand over me and be the victor.

Just once.

But I never once saw the crimson flash in his eyes; I never once feared him.

Even weak things can be frightening when they are truly angry; animal rage is dangerous, because there are no rules. There are no things such as honour, there is nothing you cannot do.

That reminds me of yet another trapped spirit.

It was the darkness of Marik Ishtar.

Now in his eyes was true, untamed, raw passion. It was mistaken for madness, but I saw in him what you see in the eyes of a cornered wolf; fear and anger and power.

He couldn't control it, though, despite his unnerving intelligence. Unsurprising, seeing as most _humans _can barely control themselves, and the darkness was far from human.

Sometimes I wonder what he could have turned out like if he'd been allowed to remain. Would he have learned to control that fury, or would he have simply torn himself and everyone around him to pieces?

It would have been an interesting experiment.

I suppose I was so fascinated because he was like me in reverse; I went from human to monster. Could he go from monster to human?

Or do you have to be born one? It seems a little unfair that it can only work one way. Like being able to make a cake but not eat it.

What an appalling metaphor.

Ah well. He's long gone now. Rotting in the shadows, poor beautiful thing. He was vicious and utterly unhinged, but beautiful nonetheless.

If only my landlord had the ability to let himself go, perhaps he too could be beautiful.

Shall I tell you what's beautiful? An unmasked thing. A person without a mask of perfection can be stunning.

The night sky is much nicer without the clouds. The land might be colder, but the stars can be seen. Silver sparkling things shining light billions of years old. To a star our lives are like a gentle breeze blowing by, or a spark from a fire dying, or a bubble bursting.

The stars are probably watching my bubble right now, wondering why it's so damn resilient. A bubble is rather similar to a human. Frustratingly thin, floating along on the wind or on water, just waiting for itself to rupture in the tiniest, most insignificant of explosions.

One day the gods will get sick of blowing bubbles in the same way I am getting sick of being one; drifting and useless.

No one names a bubble, because they know it will be gone in a millisecond.

I don't even remember my name. It began with A... or was it D?

Who cares?

I remember my title.

Touzouko.

...

Aren't you bored yet?

Ha. Modern humans really are dull.

Enjoy life while it lasts, bright eyes.

Ha.

HA!

That was the crazy talking.

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><p><strong>Thanks for reading! <strong>

**Reviews?**

**Kal277 x **

**P.S. For those who care: Inspiration and FFH are not void! They are just very slow. I know, I have no excuse. Thank you and please-don't-give-up-on-me! **


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